Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative Analysis of Party Manifestos in Ten European Countries

Transcription

1 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp Izvorni znanstveni članak 329(4) 195/199 Primljeno: 12. studenog Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative Analysis of Party Manifestos in Ten European Countries ANAMARIJA MUSA Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb Summary The Silent Revolution Theory argues that in the second part of the 20 th century, due to their socialization in an environment of economic affluence and absence of war, the citizens of advanced industrial democracies became more post-materialist in their value orientation; placing a higher value on issues such as personal freedom, self-actualisation, gender and racial equality or protection of the environment. At the same time, they are expected to put less emphasis on materialist values, such as high income or personal security. A content analysis of party programmes in 10 European countries was carried out in order to establish whether current economic, security and democracy levels affect the distribution of values and whether it is possible to make a distinction between different subtypes of values. The research demonstrates that a country s better economic performance is associated with the rise of post-materialism, and that a lower democracy level indicates a higher proportion of the human rights dimension of post-materialism at the expense of the lifestyle dimension. There was not enough evidence to conclude that security problems affect the security dimension of materialist values at the expense of the economic dimension. Key words: silent revolution, materialist values, post-materialist values, Inglehart Mailing address: Faculty of Law, Trg maršala Tita 3, HR Zagreb. anamariamusa@yahoo.com

2 122 Musa, A., Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative Introduction At the end of the 1960s, the explosion of civic discontent and the flourishing of various social movements seeking to raise attention to previously neglected social issues came as a surprise for the contemporary analysts of political behaviour and party systems of advanced industrial democracies. The new issues were raised by distinctive social groups, such as students, the well-educated and minority groups, which did not unambiguously fit into any of the previously established social classes. Unlike the previous generations, they refused to accept a social order which neglected personal freedom, self-expression, gender and racial equality or the protection of the environment. Thus, reality challenged two essentially opposing ideas in the political science of the 1960s. The first one was the general consensus on class-based models of politics, best described by Lipset and Rokkan s (1967) frozen party systems theory, which argued that the political parties of the 1960s, similarly to those in the 1920s, represented the final product of historical development of party systems through national and industrial revolutions. Consequently, the economically based social class was considered to be the best predictor of voting behaviour, creating a firm basis for the rigid Left-Right division of party systems. Similarly, outbursts of political activism seemed to contradict Bell s end of ideology thesis, which argued that technical rationality in the age of affluence will replace political conflict with political consensus. Ideology will lose its power to mobilize the masses and, in the future, cold logic and scientific reasoning should become the omnipotent means of solving the problems of the post-industrial society. But, while economic cleavages become less intense with the rising levels of economic development, they gradually give way to other types of conflict (Inglehart, 1997:1292). In other words, the growing polarization along the newly raised issues as well as unconventional methods of political behaviour predicted that an intense conflict will persist to determine political behaviour, but in the future it will not be focused primarily on the old economic agenda. Ronald Inglehart's Silent Revolution Theory represents an attempt to explain the emergence of a new set of values, which changed the social basis of the politics, the modes of political participation, the nature of issues, and the support for national and international authorities (Van Deth, 1983:63). Inglehart s basic assumption is that the generational change underlines this value shift from material to post-materialist concerns the younger generations, born after World War II, who have not experienced economic and physical insecurity during their formative years, will have different value priorities than the older generations who have experienced unfavourable circumstances, such as poverty or war (Inglehart, 1971). For the post-war generations, the priority to satisfy the basic needs for material goods and physical security was replaced by an increased importance of the issues of self-

3 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp expression, lifestyles and individual freedom. In other words, if a person grows up in the period of economic affluence and security, there is a great chance that he or she will place greater value on post-materialist issues, taking the materialist needs which have been satisfied throughout his or hers life for granted. The Silent Revolution Theory served as a basis for numerous analyses, which show that the post-materialist value shift is a universal phenomenon, not restricted only to advanced Western democracies, and that it can be ascribed to increased economic growth in many parts of the world (Inglehart, 2000:224; Knutsen, 1995). It affects party systems, which undergo significant changes and transformations (Flanagan, 1982; Dalton, 1996), changes political behaviour, creates a new political culture and leads to a more democratic society (Inglehart, 2000). Moreover, it is an irreversible phenomenon on the societal level since the number of post-materialists rises significantly with time, by one point of the index per year (Inglehart and Abramson, 1994:337). This paper will attempt to confront two problems with Inglehart's theory. The first one, by now hardly challenged, 1 is the oversimplification of the materialist post-materialist dichotomy (hereinafter: M-PM). It does not seem reasonable to expect post-materialist and materialist values to be two homogenous groups of values. Is it acceptable to divide a whole range of different desires, needs, attitudes and values into only two broad categories? Is the person who favours a strong police because of a high crime rate equally materialist to the person who supports strong anti-inflation measures because of a severe economic recession? The second problem comes from Inglehart s argument that early socialization has the strongest effect on the formation of post-materialist values. Although Inglehart admits that later experiences in life might temporarily affect value orientations (Inglehart and Abramson, 1994), other researchers showed that period and life cycle effects are underestimated in Inglehart s theory (Clarke and Dutt, 1991; Duch and Taylor 1993; Fuchs and Rohrschneider, 1998). Hence, high unemployment or wartime may convert hard-boiled post-materialists into materialists. Accordingly, this paper will try to address the following question: What is the impact of a country s economic performance, its security problems and the level of democracy on the M-PM value orientations of the citizens, and is it possible to define different subcategories in these two groups of values? Our research confirms that economic performance and democracy level have an impact on the distribution of values, while the security thesis is not confirmed. Moreover, our findings show that the proposed model rests on sound 1 Debating with Inglehart, Flanagan (1987) tried to develop a more complex concept of the libertarian-authoritarian value dimension, restricting the materialist dimension to economic issues only.

4 124 Musa, A., Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative... foundations. The research consists of an analysis of values in party programmes in 10 European countries. The first part of the paper presents an overview of Inglehart s theory and its critique, our proposed model, and the main hypotheses. The research method and the data are presented in the second part, while the third part contains the findings and the conclusion. 2. The Silent Revolution Theory: An Overview Ronald Inglehart s Silent Revolution Theory (Inglehart, 1971, 1977) is an influential explanation of the broader process of cultural change visible in the second part of the 20 th century, i.e. the post-modernisation thesis. As a consequence of the economic and technological development, the absence of war, the emergence of the welfare state, the expansion of educational opportunities and an increase in communication, the value shift from the economic features of life towards lifestyle concerns and self-actualisation manifested itself through new types of political participation, increased political action, transformation of party systems, decline in social class voting and more effective democratic institutions (Inglehart, 2000:26-27). Adopting the political culture approach, which implies that clusters of attitudes form durable subjective orientations that are more important than the objective conditions of an individual's environment (Jackman and Miller, 1996:636), Inglehart (1971, 1984, 2000) claims that the conditions of affluence and security in the post-war period lead to a basic shift in value priorities among the Western European citizens and elites. The generations born after World War II experienced unprecedented economic affluence and physical security and shifted their priorities from materialist to post-materialist orientation. Conversely, older generations remained oriented towards materialistic goals because variations in subjective orientations reflect differences in one's socialization experience, with early learning conditioning later learning, making the former more difficult to undo (Inglehart, 1977:19). Thus, as younger generations gradually replace older ones in the adult population, the prevailing worldview in these societies is being transformed (Inglehart, 1977:3). The cultural change is a gradual, but irreversible process. The starting point for Inglehart s claim is Maslow s hierarchy of needs, which implies that the level of satisfaction of the basic needs determines human behaviour. After an individual s lower needs for food and shelter (material needs) are fulfilled, one feels a sense of satisfaction, but after a time, one begins to take one's situation for granted (Inglehart, 1977a:433). Thus, the individual s priorities turn to the higher-order needs, such as the sense of belonging, self-esteem, participation, self-actualisation and the fulfilment of intellectual and aesthetic potential (post-materialist needs). From this basis Inglehart (1977a:433) suggests the first foundation stone of his theory: the scarcity hypothesis. An individual s priorities reflect the socioeconomic environment: one places the greatest subjective value on those

5 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp things that are in relatively short supply. In his later works, Inglehart turns to the concept of diminishing marginal utility of economic determinism: economic factors tend to play a decisive role under conditions of economic scarcity; but as scarcity diminishes, other factors shape society to an increasing degree (Inglehart, 1987:1289). This is only a restatement of the scarcity hypothesis and its transfer from the individual to the societal level. The scarcity hypothesis is supplemented by his second, crucial assumption, which accentuates the persistence of values throughout the individual s life: the socialization hypothesis. A relationship between socioeconomic environment and value priorities is not one of immediate adjustment: a substantial time lag is involved because, to a large extent, one s basic values reflect the conditions that prevailed during one s preadult years (Inglehart, 1997:33). In other words, the post-war generations, whose material needs were satisfied during their preadult lives due to economic affluence and the absence of war, will turn to the higher order non-materialist needs when they reach adulthood. At the same time, older generations will remain likely to give priority to material needs. Consequently, the natural generational replacement will give rise to post-materialism and a general decline of economic issues on the political agenda in favour of questions of lifestyle and political participation (Kitschelt, 1994). In order to empirically support his theory, Inglehart constructed a simple questionnaire, asking respondents to single out the two most important things from the following list: (1) maintaining order in the nation, (2) giving people more say in important political decisions, (3) fighting rising prices and (4) protecting freedom of speech (Inglehart, 1971:994). According to their answers, respondents were classified as materialists (those choosing the 1 st and the 3 rd items on the list), post-materialists (the 2 nd and the 4 th items), and mixed type (combination). The more developed 12-item battery includes eight additional issues: those regarding economic growth, economic stability, strong defence forces and fighting crime indicate a materialist value orientation, while those relating to greater participation, less impersonal and a more humane society, a higher valuation of ideas, and making the living environment more beautiful reveal post-materialism. Using the 4-item battery in surveys during the 1970s and the modified 12-item battery in the later surveys, and constructing post-materialism indices on the basis of responses, Inglehart (1971, 1977, 1990, 2000) showed that there was a shift towards post-materialism in most of the Western European countries as a consequence of the increased affluence of these societies, and that among the younger generations there is a higher proportion of post-materialists than among the older generations. Inglehart suggests that post-materialism is a major force behind the emergence of the New Class, which is distinctive in occupational and educational characteristics and prevailingly concentrated in the upper socioeconomic strata (Inglehart, 1981:895). Since their material needs are satisfied, they have a larger amount of psychic energy available for politics, they are

6 126 Musa, A., Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative... less supportive of the established social order, and subjectively, they have less to lose from unconventional political action than Materialists (Inglehart, 1981:890). The New Class raised a new set of issues, such as protection of the environment, nuclear power, sustainable development, women s rights, etc. and it is no longer focused on the old economic agenda and redistributive policies. Thus, economic prosperity and the welfare state made it possible for a large part of society to abandon the claim for further distribution and to turn to the issues of the public's sense of justice, social solidarity, and other nonmaterial motivations (Inglehart, 1977:253). Consequently, since the problems that preoccupied the Old Left were solved and reached the point of diminishing returns (Inglehart, 1987:1295), instead of the old Left-Right cleavage 2, the party systems of advanced industrial societies are experiencing a growing tendency of polarization along the new M-PM dimension, which cuts across the old Left-Right axis (Inglehart, 1984:26) 3. The New Class is expected to find its political expression in the New Left, while the working class is expected to move more to the Right, as a consequence of the split between the post-materialist and the materialist Left (Inglehart, 1984:28; Dalton, 1996:188). In a similar sense, in order to cover some parts of the new issues, smaller post-materialist parties emerge (e.g. green parties). In sum, Inglehart (1984) argues that rising post-materialism has placed the existing party alignments under chronic stress and that a possible outcome could be dealignment, realignment or the gradual assimilation of the new axis of polarization in the new party constellation. The New Politics thesis is also supported by other authors, but some of them do not agree that support for new values could constitute the basis for a new group-party alignment. Instead, electoral politics is moving from cleavages defined by fixed social groups to value and issue cleavages which identify communities of like-minded individuals (Dalton, 1996:193). 3. Has There Been a Silent Revolution? A Critique of Inglehart s Concept Similarly to any other theory attempting to explain a whole range of social phenomena in a simple way, Inglehart s theory was subsequently challenged and debated. Although many authors confirmed some of his argu- 2 Inglehart (1984:26) defines political cleavage as a relatively stable patterns of polarization in which given groups support given policies or parties, while other groups support opposing policies or parties. 3 Erickson and Laycock (2002) claim that post-materialist values do not replace the old Left-Right concerns: they found that Canadian social democrats support a post-materialist agenda on top of their class equality goals.

7 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp ments (Dalton, 1977, 1996; Flanagan, 1982; Gibson and Duch, 1994, Opp 1990; Scarbrough, 1995), some of them contested his basic assumptions. The first group of criticism relates to Inglehart s core thesis about the causal relationship between economic affluence and post-materialism, accentuating the importance of other factors such as education (Dalton, 1977; Duch and Taylor, 1993; Kitschelt, 1995; Scarbrough, 1995) or wartime experience (De Graaf and Evans, 1996). For example, Betz (1990:252) argues that the German Greens, as typical post-materialists, are highly educated but not economically secure. Similarly, De Graaf and Evans (1996:610) argue that post-materialism seems to be related to non-economic factors, such as severity of war experience, expansion of educational opportunities and the welfare state. The second type of criticism refers to the measurement problem and the reliability of the post-materialist index (Clarke and Dutt, 1991, Jackman and Miller, 1996, Duch and Taylor, 1993; Flanagan, 1982). The question is: what is measured and how. Some authors argue that Inglehart s index does not measure materialist and post-materialist values but short-term political preferences or attitudes (Trump, 1991; Van Deth, 1983; Clarke and Dutt, 1991), liberal values (De Graaf and Evans, 1996; Duch and Taylor, 1993) or that it is focused on terminal instead of instrumental values (Flanagan, 1982) 4. The format of the battery was also heavily disputed. Critics argued that the format of the questionnaire leads to a dilemma of constrained choice and that a disproportionately large number of respondents will fall into the mixed category (Flanagan, 1987); or that it stimulates random responses and, hence, does not permit inference from the individual to the societal level (Davis and Davenport, 1999:662). Similarly, Clarke et al. (1997) argue that the Euro-barometer battery, which measures post-materialist values, is an example of the conversations in context problem because it is very sensitive to current macroeconomic conditions, showing that high unemployment and low inflation will artificially increase the number of post-materialists, because instead of choosing fighting rising prices, the respondents will choose one of the post-materialist options. Finally, the third group of criticism relates to the debate over the importance of four different factors in the formation of post-materialist orientations: generational (or cohort) effects (political socialization in times of economic well-being), period effects (good economic performance), life-cycle effects and educational effects. Setting up his theory on socialization thesis in his later work, Inglehart admits that period effects might temporarily affect the rise of materialism, but does not accept the relevance of life-cycle effects (Inglehart and Abramson, 1994). 4 Trump s research (1991:383) among secondary school students in the US and Germany led him to conclude that post-materialist orientations might not be fundamental 'values' but rather short-term social and political attitudes.

8 128 Musa, A., Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative... However, research shows that period effects might be more important than Inglehart allows and that values learned during the formative years are not long-lasting or stable (Van Deth, 1983; Flanagan, 1987; Duch and Taylor, 1993; Scarbrough, 1995). For example, an analysis of the impact of German unification on the value shift showed that economic, immigration and security issues became more salient to voters, while the interest in postmaterial issues was reduced (Fuchs and Rohrschneider, 1998). Similarly, research carried out in eight West European countries between , suggests that rather than early socialization, education and economic conditions at the time of the survey are much more important factors in explaining the variations in the post-materialist index (Duch and Taylor, 1993). In sum, the research gives strong evidence for the importance of the short-term factors. It seems that post-materialists are likely to refocus their attention to economic issues in the turbulent times of economic or physical insecurity and that the relative priority that a respondent attaches to economic issues in relation to other concerns varies across the life cycle as the respondent s economic responsibilities and burdens change (Flanagan, 1987:309). 4. A New Model: The Spreading of the Dichotomy Our research tries to address the criticism directed towards the substance of Inglehart s theory and, at the same time, avoid repeating the problematic methodology. First, in order to overcome the simplicity of his concept, we offer a more elaborate scheme of the M-PM value dimension by dividing the two basic categories into further subcategories (see Figure 1). Second, we tackle the socialization vs. period effects debate by establishing whether current macroeconomic issues, security problems or the democracy level affect the distribution of values. Third, we explore what the impact of a country s economic affluence is on the relationship between materialist and post-materialist values. First, in order to evaluate the impact of economic and non-economic factors on post-materialism, we tested whether the current economic affluence of a society is a strong predictor of post-materialism. We expect that postmaterialism grows with economic affluence. Second, we split Inglehart s 4- item battery by dividing the post-materialist values into two categories one concerned with human rights in general and another one related to lifestyle issues. We expect that the ratio between the human rights and the lifestyle dimension changes with the level of democracy in the country because lower levels of democratisation will be conducive to the human rights dimension at the expense of the lifestyle dimension. This way, we are taking the scarcity hypothesis into account, but instead of the socialization hypothesis we argue for period effects. By the same token, if we divide the materialist values into two categories economic and security, we expect that

9 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp security problems in a country would raise the security dimension of materialist values at the expense of the economic category. Figure 1: A New Model of Materialist and Post-materialist Values ECONOMIC ISSUES Economic growth Monetary policy Unemployment SECURITY ISSUES Statehood issues Military forces Law and order HUMAN RIGHTS Freedom and human rights Social justice Political participation LIFESTYLE Environment Education, science and knowledge society Culture MATERIALIST VALUES POST-MATERIALIST VALUES TERRITORIAL SECURITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DEMOCRATISATION According to our assumptions, we can state the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: Electoral programmes of political parties in more affluent societies include more post-materialist values than those in less affluent societies. Hypothesis 2: In countries with security problems party programmes include more security values than economic values, while in countries without security problems party programmes include more economic values than security values. Hypothesis 3: In countries with a higher level of democratisation party programmes include more lifestyle than human rights post-materialist values. Conversely, in less democratic countries party programmes include more human rights values than lifestyle post-materialist values. 5. The Research Method Responding to the critique of Inglehart s empirical method, instead of using questionnaires to measure the individual level political attitudes, we conducted an analysis of party programmes in 10 European countries, which showed us how post-materialist and materialist values are distributed among the population.

10 130 Musa, A., Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative The Function of Party Programmes Our starting point is the notion that parties serve as mediators between citizens demands and public outcomes (Klingemann, 1995:183), expressing the views of their supporters and aggregating political interests. In opposition to the argument that citizens have been abandoned by their parties, which has lead the representative democracy into a state of crisis (see Klingemann, 1995:200), there is evidence that parties are energetic actors, identifying new sources of support and modifying their electoral appeals accordingly, in order to maintain their electoral bases (Rose, 1982; quoted in McAllister and Studlar, 1995:213). The best way for a party to achieve its mediating function is through its election programme, which translates public values and interests into a programme of governing (Pennings and Keman, 2002:55). Although the traditional view of party manifestos treated them as a representation of the party s ideological orientation, updated for the new elections (Caul and Gray, 2000:215), their content has changed. As a consequence of the weakening of the traditional social cleavages and the softening of the Left-Right party divisions, the party programmes are to a large extent responding to reality and to the existing problems in the social environment. This claim is in line with the theory of partisan convergence, set by Kirchheimer in 1966 (Mair, 1997). The research confirmed that during the 1960s and the 1970s a convergence of the parties toward the centre of the Left-Right scale took place (Klingemann et al, 1994:247; Mair, 1997; Knutsen, 1988; Caul and Gray, 2000:210). 5 The catch-all nature of parties is even more emphasized in the post-communist countries, since their electorates are more open and less likely to be underpinned by a strong cleavage structure (Mair, 1997:181; Dalton, 1996a:339). Instead of relying on party loyalties, the post-communist party leaders found themselves in a situation where almost all votes are up for grabs (Geddes, 1995:252). Hence, the attempt to keep the traditional voters and at the same time attract new ones results in a strong pressure on parties to respond to relevant problems. In this regard election programs seem to be responding, at least indirectly, to issues affecting the total national electorate (Klingeman et al., 1994:30). A research of 26 Left-Right categories in party manifestos confirms that parties respond to their environment in formulating their programmes and that parties may have shifted from selling to marketing issues, reflecting instead of shaping public opinions. (Caul and Gray, 2000: 210). Briefly, the absence of clear social clues and party divisions that results in greater electoral volatility forces political parties to be more responsive to 5 The research of party programmes in 12 European countries in the 1970s and the 1980s shows that there is a pattern of convergence between parties and voters but that parties tend to be more centrist than their supporters (Klingemann, 1995:201).

11 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp the interests and needs of the citizens. At the same time, the voting decision becomes a more demanding task for voters more dependent on the individual beliefs and values (Dalton, 1996:194). In this respect, electoral programmes offer a direction for voters and give an approximate reflection of the values and interests of the electorate in general. Content analysis of party programmes was often used to estimate a party s Left-Right position (Gabel and Huber, 2000), party identities (Janda et al., 1995), salience of issues, party convergence (Klingemann, 1995), etc. The manifestos were analysed by different methods, such as, hand coding, computerised coding and expert opinions, each having advantages and disadvantages (see Laver and Gary, 2000) The Methodological Approach For the purpose of our research, the party programmes were analysed using content analysis method relying on the (hand) coding system applied since 1979 by the Manifesto Research Group in the Comparative Manifestos Project (hereinafter: CMP). The CMP includes nearly 2000 party programmes, which are coded with the help of a coding scheme based on 56 categories divided into 7 domains covering all main topics of these documents. The unit of analysis in the CMP is a quasi-sentence, defined as either a complete sentence or a part of a sentence relating to one political idea. Every quasi-sentence is assigned to one coding category. Relative proportions are obtained on the basis of each category s frequency. There are several shortcomings underlying the CMP method, such as unreliability caused by the definition of a quasi-sentence, or overlapping and missing categories (Pennings and Keman, 2002:55). In addition, Gabel and Huber (2000) argue that the comparability of the programmes might be affected by differences in the length of the programmes, party size (major parties are expected to cover a wider range of issues), government participation (incumbent parties are more likely to write good manifestos), and country specificities. However, since the method is widely used and it has obtained valuable results, our research was based on a similar procedure. Each party programme was divided into coding units or quasi-sentences that contain one political idea. The total amount of all quasi-sentences in each programme is comprised of quasi-sentences carrying the idea related to the M-PM values we want to measure (codes E, S, H, L), but also of sentences expressing values or issues in which we are not interested (code 000). After counting all quasi-sentences, the proportions and percentages for each type of values were compared according to our hypotheses. Some parts of the programmes were omitted, such as tables of content, section headings, introductory remarks, overviews of the historical development of the party, summaries or excerpts.

12 132 Musa, A., Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative Sampling Rationale Although the complete study would benefit from an extensive analysis of all parties in all European countries, time and resources at our disposal acted as limitations. Thus, we focused on available programmes, which were downloaded from the parties web pages in July and August Due to technical problems (programme not available, language issues), we were forced to narrow our analysis to five old EU members (Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom) and five post-communist countries (the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia), which makes a total of 10 countries. From the total of 62 parties and coalitions that entered parliaments in the last parliamentary elections in the chosen countries, we decided to analyse the manifestos of those which won at least 8% of votes. This brings us to 37 parties or coalitions. Together, the chosen parties won between 64.5% and 90.7% of votes, with an average of 81.58%. In most of the countries, these parties received between 78% and 90% of the votes. Our final sample consisted of 35 party programmes (2 out of the original 37 party programmes were too short for analysis). The lengths of the programmes range from 4 to 98 pages or from 83 to 1262 units. Approximately 53.23% of the coding units fall in the 000 category, ranging from 47.64% in Austria to 63.19% in Bulgaria. In some cases, due to the unavailability of programmes from the latest elections, we decided to use programmes from the previous elections. 6. The Data Our basic assumption was that the 10 countries can be placed in different positions regarding their economic performance, security issues and democracy level, and that the distribution of post-materialist and materialist values and their subcategories changes with variations in the independent variable. In essence, we divided the materialist values into economic and the security categories, each further comprising of three subcategories: the first category relates to the economic development, monetary policy and unemployment; while the second consists of statehood issues, the military, and law and order. Likewise, we established subcategories of post-materialist values: freedom and human rights, and social justice and political participation relate to the human rights dimension, while the environment, education and culture belong to the lifestyle dimension. A detailed description of categories and subcategories is presented in Table 1. Some issues were not included in the analysis because they are ambiguous, unclear or country-specific (zero-units).

13 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp Table 1: Materialist and Post-materialist Values Codes and Description of Subcategories TYPE CATEGORY CODE SUBCATEGORY DESCRIPTION MATERIALIST VALUES POST-MATERIALIST VALUES ECONOMIC (E) SECURITY (S) HUMAN RIGHTS (H) LIFESTYLE (L) E01 Economic Productivity, market (de)regulation, economic development competition, investments E02 Monetary policy Anti-inflation measures, central bank, bank system, financial market E03 Unemployment Measures for tackling unemployment Need to resolve territorial problems, consolidation of the state, control of state S01 Statehood issues borders, security issues, mentioning of historical development of the nation and war victories S02 Military Modernisation of armed forces, increase in military expenditures Enforcement of all laws, secure legal S03 Law and order environment, actions against crime, support and resources for police, improvement of the justice system, fighting corruption Importance of personal freedom and civil H01 Freedom and rights, freedom of speech, freedom from human rights coercion in the political and economic spheres, protection of minority rights Equality and solidarity, special protection for H02 Social justice the underprivileged, end of discrimination, acceptance of different ways of life, multiculturalism; H03 L01 L02 L03 Political participation Environment Education, science and knowledge society Culture and sports Broader political participation; inclusion of citizens in political decision-making; support for devolution, regional and local autonomy; Preservation of nature and natural resources, proper use of common goods, improvement of the environment, use of energy; environmentfriendly transport system and technology; sustainable development; protection of endangered species; waste management Raising the spending on education, development of scientific research, support for universities and institutes, development of knowledge society, information society and use of internet; Need to provide cultural and leisure facilities, investments in cultural institutions, need to promote cultural heritage, cultural mass media; Firstly, we counted the frequencies for each subcategory, as well as zerounits (000 code), and calculated the percentages. Secondly, we computed ratios for each of our three hypotheses: for the first one: the ratio of post-materialist and materialist values (R1); for the second hypothesis: the ratio of se-

14 134 Musa, A., Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative... curity and economic values (R2); for the third hypothesis: the ratio of lifestyle and human rights issues (R3). Thirdly, we ranked the countries according to the obtained ratios. Finally, we compared how the ranks scored on the dependent variable related to the ranks scored on our independent variables. Our first hypothesis relates to the impact that a country s economic performance has on the relationship between post-materialist and materialist values. As an indicator of economic performance we applied GDP per capita at Purchase Parity Rate, because high GDP is generally perceived as an indicator of economic security (Inglehart and Abramson, 1994:347) and the powerful predictor of post-materialist values (Dalton, 1977; Inglehart, 1990). We ranked the countries from 1 to 10 accordingly, expecting that a higher GDP per capita is connected with a rise of post-materialist values. The second hypothesis relates to the connection between security problems such as wartime, high crime rate, questions of territorial integrity, problems with borders, etc., and the ratio of security and economic materialist values. We expected that a larger number of security problems results in frequent mentioning of security issues in electoral programmes. In absence of a better measure (such as general crime rate), we used the percentage of the GDP that was spent on the military and the number of homicides per inhabitants as indicators of security. Again, we ranked the countries according to our independent variable and compared the ranks with the ranking on the security vs. economic values ratio scale. According to our third hypothesis, we expected that a higher level of democracy results in a greater proportion of lifestyle values in relation to human rights issues. As an indicator for democratisation we applied Freedom House ratings to compute our average democracy ratings. The Freedom in the World survey conducted by the Freedom House organisation provides an annual evaluation of the state of global freedom, assessing political rights and civil liberties on a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 represents the most free and 7 the least free category. 6 Our average ratings were obtained by adding up all the ratings given to a country in the eight years preceding the elections, including the year of the elections, divided by 16 (there are two ratings for each year, on political rights and civil liberties scales). The countries were ranked accordingly. The democracy rank was compared to the country s rank regarding the ratio of lifestyle and human rights issues. 6 The Freedom House list of items includes political rights relating to the electoral process, political participation, functioning of government, freedom of expression, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, personal autonomy and individual rights.

15 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp Findings In general, our findings suggest that two of our three hypotheses have empirical foundations, namely Hypotheses 1 and 3. The summarized data are presented in Tables The division corresponds to the grouping of the countries according to their economic performance (high GDP countries / medium and low GDP countries). Table 3: Ratios Country (elections) R1 PM/M R2 S/E R3 L/H Austria (2002) Finland (2003) Germany (2002) Ireland (2002) UK (2001) Average Bulgaria (2001) Croatia (2003) Czech Rep. (2002) Serbia (2003) Slovenia (2000) Average Total average There is some evidence that our Hypothesis 1 rests on sound foundations (see Tables 3 and 4 and Graphs 1 and 2). First, the data show that the most affluent country, Austria, also has the highest PM/M ratio: for each materialist value, the party programmes contain 5.68 post-materialist values. Consequently, the two poorest countries have the lowest PM/M ratios (Serbia 1.07, Bulgaria 1.01), meaning that for each materialist value, there is only one post-materialist value. Hence, in these two countries, the post-materialist values are equally important to the materialist values. Second, there is a gentle drop in ratios towards the right end of the graph. If we divide the graph in two parts, we can see that the five countries with a high GDP per capita have higher ratios (average ratio 2.15) while the countries with a lower GDP have lower ratios (average ratio 1.41). In this case, only four 7 See Table 2 at the end of this paper.

16 136 Musa, A., Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative... countries ratios do not respond to our expectations, but these results can be explained. Table 4: Ratios and Rankings Country (elections) Rank R1 GDP per capita at ppp in USD b Rank Rank R2 Military expeditures as % Rank of GDP c Total homicide d Rank Rank R3 Average democracy ratinks e Austria (2002) 4 30, Finland (2003) 3 27, Germany (2002) 2 27, Ireland (2002) 8 29, UK (2001) 1 27, Bulgaria (2001) 7 7, Croatia (2003) 6 10, Czech Rep. (2002) 9 15, Serbia (2003) a 10 2, Slovenia (2000) 5 18, a All data relate to Serbia and Montenegro. Some data were not available. b Source: estimation for c Source: ; Data relate to years 1998/99 (Finland), 2000 (Slovenia) 2000/01 (Ireland), 2001/02 (Austria), 2002 est. (Croatia, Czech Republic) 2003 (Germany, UK, Bulgaria). d Source: e Source: average ratings computed on the basis of the freedom ratings from Rank Firstly, the UK s and Ireland s low ratios result from their high score on security dimension (11.71% and 8.45%; Group 1 average 7.61%) because the issue of security and order is highly important in these countries. For instance, in the subcategory S03 (Law and order) the UK s score is 9.27% while the average for Group 1 is 5.54%. On the other hand, Germany has an above average score in the economy dimension (7.49%; the Group 1 average 6.23%), especially in the E03 subcategory, which is most probably caused by the high unemployment rate in Germany (10.7% in 2003, Group 1 average 6.86%). 8 Finally, Croatia s high PM/M ratio might be attributed to the 8 For unemployment rates see

17 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp importance of human rights issues, such as minority rights and social justice (H=17.97%; Group 2 average 10.45%). Besides, if we look more closely at Graph 1, we can see that the materialist value rates grow as the GDP falls. Again, the UK, Ireland and Croatia are significantly dislocated from the expected positions. In sum, we can say that Hypothesis 1 is confirmed with a qualified acceptance. Graph 1: Post-materialist and Materialist Values in Relation to GDP Per Capita 50% 45% AUS 40% FIN CRO P e r c e n t a g e s 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% IRE UK GER SLO CZ BG SER 10% 5% 0% 30 29,8 27,7 27,6 27,3 18,3 15,7 10,7 7,6 2,3 GDP per capita at PPP in 1,000 USD Materialist Postmaterialist

18 138 Musa, A., Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative... Graph 2: Ratio of Post-materialist and Materialist Values in Relation to GDP Per Capita 6 AUS Ratio PM/M IRL UK GER FIN SLO CZ CRO BG SER ,8 27,7 27,6 27,3 18,3 15,7 10,7 7,6 2,3 GDP per capita at PPP in 1,000 USD According to Hypothesis 2, security problems should give rise to the security dimension of materialist values, at the expense of the economic dimension. If we look closer at the first indicator (Tables 3 and 4, Graphs 3 and 4), we can see that the results only partially correspond to our expectation. Graph 3: Ratio of Security and Economic Values in Relation to Military Expenditures Ratio S/E 2 1,8 1,6 1,4 1,2 1 0,8 0,6 0,4 0,2 0 AUS IRL SLO GER FIN CZ CRO UK BG 0,8 0,9 1,5 1,7 2 2,1 2,39 2,4 2,6 Military Expenditures % GDP

19 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp Graph 4: Ratio of Security and Economic Values in Relation to Number of Homicides Ratio S/E 2 1,8 1,6 1,4 1,2 1 0,8 0,6 0,4 0,2 0 UK IRE AUS CZ SLO GER BG CRO FIN 1,4 2,3 2,1 4,3 6 6,8 8,3 8,9 10,1 Homicide per 1,000 inhabitants While German, Slovenian, Czech and UK ratios behave according to our hypothesis, five countries show significant aberrations. Austria and Ireland have high security ratios (1.32 and 1.93) and at the same time they spend a small portion of their funds on the armed forces. The results can be explained by the fact that both countries devote less attention to the economic issues they are the two most affluent countries in our sample, with a low unemployment rate (Austria 4.3%, Ireland 5%). Hence, it is reasonable to conclude that security issues will be given more attention in the party programmes. On the other hand, Bulgaria and Croatia are located on the right end of the military expenditures scale, but at the same time they have a low security ratio (0.69 and 0.58). Part of the explanation might be found in the fact that both countries armed forces are inherited from the former postcommunist regime and they are still undergoing significant reforms. Moreover, high military expenditures in Croatia can, to a high degree, be ascribed to the war in the 1990s. On the other hand, the low security ratio in these two countries can be attributed to the high salience of economic issues, since both countries are still trying to catch up with EU members. Finally, Finland s surprisingly low security ratio is much harder to explain. Although Finland s high unemployment rate (9.2% in 2003) could be a part of the explanation (E03=5.43%, Group 1 average 2.79), it is quite unbelievable that the country which according to statistics, [ ] is one of the most violent countries in Europe (The Green League Party Platform,

20 140 Musa, A., Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative :17) pays almost no attention at all to security issues. The European Sourcebook data on crime rates show that among the 10 countries from our sample, Finland ranks first in homicide and second in rape and assault. Graph 4 shows that the relationship between the homicide rate and security ratio is exactly the inverse of what was expected in Hypothesis 2. Only the UK s ratio disrupts this reversed line. It is difficult to determine whether our Hypothesis 2 remains unconfirmed due to the parties lack of interest for security issues, high salience of the economic dimension, or the wrong indicators. In any case, Hypothesis 2 cannot be confirmed and seeks further exploration. In Hypothesis 3, we claimed that the ratio of lifestyle vs. human rights values is higher if the country is more democratic. Hence, the human rights dimension of post-materialist values will be more salient in less democratic societies. If we divide the 10 countries into three groups according to their democracy ratings, our findings (see Tables 3 and 4 and Graph 5) show that eight countries ratios are located as expected. First, the group of countries with low democratic level, which are at the same time all post-communist countries still on their way to full democratisation (Bulgaria 2,2, Croatia 3,31 and Serbia 4,81 democracy rating), has the lowest life-style ratio: we found approximately one life-style issue for each human right issue (1,09-1,17). Thus, we can conclude that human rights are still very important and that the lifestyle dimension does not overcome the human rights dimension. Graph 5: Ratio of Lifestyle and Human Rights Values in Relation to the Average Democracy Rating Ratio L/H 3 2,5 2 1,5 AUS IRL GER UK CZ SLO BG CRO SER 1 FIN 0, ,06 1,5 1,5 1,5 1,56 2 3,31 4,81 Average Freedomhouse rating

21 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp Second, three out of seven democratic countries (ratios ) have similarly high ratios: in these countries party programmes recognise 2 (Germany, Slovenia, Ireland) or 2.5 lifestyle values (UK and Czech Republic) for each human rights value. Finally, the two most democratic countries are dislocated: contrary to expectations, Finland s lifestyle ratio is the lowest (0.73), while Austria s ratio (1.32) is somewhat higher than the ratio of the less democratic group, and considerably lower than the ratio of the democratic group with the rating of 1.5. But, we believe that it is possible to explain the awkward positions of these two countries. Thus, Finland s low life-style ratio can be attributed to its strong tradition of the welfare state, the rules of the electoral game, and to the party ideology, which all work in favour of the human rights dimension. Finland scores well above average in freedom and human rights (7.58%) and social justice (10.46%). At the same time, Finland's parties pay little attention to education (3.52%; Group 1 average 6.97%) and almost completely neglect culture (0.60%; Group 1 average 4.35%). The low percentage in the education category can be explained by the high level of education of Finnish society among the 10 countries, Finland has the highest ratio of enrolment in tertiary education. 9 Similarly, the Austrian low, but still positive, lifestyle ratio (1.32) can be attributed to the high importance of minority rights. Hence, with only Finland and Austria significantly departing from expected results, we can conclude that Hypothesis 3 is confirmed. On the whole, our proposed Hypotheses 1 and 3 have empirical basis. We can conclude that a country s high economic performance is associated with a higher proportion of post-materialist values in relation to materialist values. Similarly, in more democratic countries, the lifestyle dimension of post-materialist values is considerably higher than the human rights dimension. Hence, we can deduce firstly, that period effects do matter and, secondly, that Inglehart s dichotomy can be further divided in the proposed direction. Conversely, not only did we fail to confirm our Hypothesis 2, but we also noticed that the relationship between military expenditures and security ratio goes in the direction opposite to the one we expected. One possible explanation is that our indicator is not adequate: high military expenditures could also indicate a high security level. In any case, our Hypothesis 2 should be further explored, using a better security indicator, such as total crime rate or the citizens personal sense of security. In general, our findings might be skewed because of the sample of the countries and political parties there are a different number of parties in each country, their strength is different, and their programmes are not of the same length. The shortness of the programmes might be one of the reasons why Finland (994 units) and Croatia (829 units; average units) fall 9 For gross enrolment in tertiary education ratio see Folders/Rfview/explorerp.asp

22 142 Musa, A., Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative... out of line. In addition, the choice of the countries might have affected our results. There is also a possibility that, after all, party programmes do not reflect the values and interests of the citizens as we previously assumed. Some of the analysed programmes show that their writers cannot escape the burden of their ideological past. A qualitative analysis of the programmes indicates that most of the programmes clearly reflect their party s Left-Right orientation, and that certain parties completely disregard some issues that are considered to be extremely important by other parties in the country. In order to explore this methodological problem more deeply, the data obtained from the analysis of all party programmes in one country should be compared with the individual level values survey in the same country. This way we could determine whether the programmes reflect the values of the citizens at all, and if they do, to what extent. 8. Conclusion In this paper, we tested 3 hypotheses about the relationship between different types of values, depending on the country s economic performance, security problems and democracy level. Our starting point was Inglehart s theory on post-materialist value shift. We further developed his theory by drawing a distinction between two subcategories of materialist and postmaterialist values and by claiming that the two types of values cannot be regarded as two homogenous groups. Our findings confirmed two hypotheses: a country s better economic performance is associated with the rise of post-materialism, while a lower democracy level indicates a higher proportion of the human rights dimension of post-materialism at the expense of the lifestyle dimension. There was not enough evidence to conclude that security problems in a country give rise to the security dimension at the expense of the economic dimension of materialist values. The failure to confirm this hypothesis might partially be ascribed to an inadequate indicator of security. Hence, we propose a more sophisticated methodological approach for future research: including a greater number of countries and parties, creating well balanced and exhaustive categories, and employing more adequate indicators.

23 Politička misao, Vol. XLIII, (2006), No. 5, pp Table 2: The Expressed Values Percentages